Prologue Released!

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Vice Admiral

You are about to download a true labor of love. Our team has poured countless hours of sweat into creating Wing Commander Saga, and we are all extremely pleased to share the first fruits of our labor with you. After all, without the support you have provided us, none of this would have been possible. For that, you have our deepest thanks.

Following in the footsteps of a game like Wing Commander 3 is an amazing challenge. We hope you will find a familar sense of space combat as you experience our vision of the Wing Commander universe and play your part in the incredible story that will unfold in the months and years to come.

The team is very proud of this game, and we look forward to hearing your reaction. And once again, on behalf of the entire team, let me thank you for standing by us. It means a lot.

Vice Admiral

In an interview with TCN News, Colonel Christopher “Maverick” Blair said, “I have never felt comfortable with people calling me ‘The Savior of the Confederation.’ Sure, I was the wing leader in the raid on Kilrah, and I was the one who dropped the Temblor bomb. But I don’t want people to forget that I only got that far because of the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of others.”

This is their story.

The conflict between Earth and Kilrah is drawing to a close, and the Terran Confederation is not winning. Humanity’s only hope lies in a desperate plan that will require even idealistic young fighter pilots to stretch themselves beyond all imagination. It’s the end of the world, and you have a front row seat.

Raw emotion, realistic characters, a hard look at the devastation of war, and intense large-scale space combat action await you as you assume the role of 2nd Lt. David “Sandman” Markham. Twists of fate will throw you out of your dull backwater assignment and right into the hottest spots of the most devastating war in history.

Wing Commander is back. You know Blair’s story, now experience the rest of the Saga.

1.1 ABOUT THE PROLOGUE
In the prologue missions you join Markham at the beginning of his career on the TCS Wellington. These missions are not part of the full game, which will be released in winter 2666. The upcoming full release contains more than 40 heart-pounding missions that will take your experience with the Wing Commander universe to the next level.

Game features:

Enhanced Freespace 2 engine with features such as autopilot, carrier landings, enhanced graphics, effects and more

Glow maps may fade in and out or exhibit intermittent flickering effects at a certain distance. If this is the case, you may want to activate 4xAA and 4x AF in your driver’s options.

When the autopilot is engaged, other ships may appear to rapidly jump back in forth in relative position to the player’s ship. Many times, this will not be noticeable because the other ships will be in formation behind the player. While this bug is visually strange and occurs only seldomly, it should not cause any problems, and will be corrected for the full release of Wing Commander Saga.

Capital ship surface shields are simulated and a specific sound is played when cap ship shields are hit, there is currently no visual effect. This is an issue that is being worked on and may be resolved for the full campaign. Although the surface shields of capital ships are not visible, they are active, just as they were in Wing Commander 3.

For some lower-end computers, the apperance of asteroid fields causes a significant slowdown. If you are experiencing this problem, enabling “Asteroid Field Performance Fix” option in the installer will fix it. If you are not experiencing this problem, we do not recommend that you use this option.

1.4 INSTALLATION

The game needs at least 600 MB free memory on the hard drive. Initiate installation by running prologue_setup.exe. Follow the on-screen instructions. The setup will automatically enable the settings that should allow Saga to run well on your system.

> Click on the desktop icon labeled “Launch Prologue”:

The game is now ready to run. Double click on the desktop icon labeled “Launch Prologue” and you can enjoy the improved graphics and enthralling story.

> Create a Pilot:

Once the game is running, you will need to create a pilot by entering a name and select the “Prologue” campaign in the “Campaigns” section. Then, click on Continue to begin playing Wing Commander Saga.

1.5 CUSTOMIZING LAUNCHER OPTIONS

The default settings that we have provided should allow most systems to run Wing Commander Saga well, and we recommend that you use them. However, you can customize your options by using the launcher program.

> Run the launcher:

First, run the launcher. This can be accessed through the Start/Programs menu.

> General Settings:

Level of Detail: Leave set at High unless you have a really crappy system.

Use Large Textures: This allows the game to use large textures (bigger than 256x256 in OGL and bigger than 1024x1024 in D3D).

Fix Font Distortion Problems: Some graphics cards experience problems at the edges of letters. Checking this box fixes that bug, however if you don’t have the problem in the first place it will cause the problem. So, do not select this item unless you actually have the text distortion problem while this flag is not selected.

> Configure the video options:

Click on the Video tab and select which mode you want to run the game in. You have two main choices at time of writing: OpenGL or Direct3D8. You may want to experiment to determine which one leads to better performance on your computer, but bear in mind that Direct3D is not supported by Wing Commander Saga.

> Set the command line settings:

Click on the Flags tab. Flags tell the game which new features to activate. Because the flags change frequently, it is possible that the launcher will pop up an error stating that it doesn't recognize a flag. Most likely, the flag that has produced such an error has been replaced by another one or the feature has been turned on by default. Alternatively, if you have written a flag manually rather than selecting a box, you may have misspelled the flag.
Flags:

-glow: This flag turns on the glow mapping code (which also makes the models look better).

-env: Enables environment mapping. Environment mapping intensity will be determined from the intensity of specular maps. At the time of this writing, environment mapping only works when the video mode is OpenGL.

-ambient_factor xx: This flag changes the ambient lighting which makes certain effects look more impressive and alters how well models are lit by ambient light. Try -ambient_factor 100 as a starting point and feel free to experiment with the number. Lower levels of ambient lighting will allow you to see the various lighting effects better. Higher levels will allow you to see the models more discretely, similar to how they are rendered in Wing Commander 3.

-wcsaga: Enables feature set for The Wing Commander Saga

-no_vsync: Disables vertical sync.

-fps: This flag turns on the frames per second counter so you can see if the effects are slowing down the game.

> Notes:

The specular lighting and glow maps tags are also essential. Turning them off will not result in increased performance.

640x480 and 800x600 resolutions are not supported. Most systems should be able to have decent performance on the default resolution setting.

> Click Run:

After completing your custom setup, click the run button to launch the Prologue, or press the Okay button and launch the prologue from the desktop icon.

The controls may seem complex at first, but will become familiar after a little practice. Each demo mission explains part of the game mechanics. You may access a list of controls through the “Options” menu in-game.
It should be noted that the Arrow features the same autoslide (or "Shelton Slide") feature that it had in Wing Commander III. Autoslide is toggled on and off by pressing Alt + G. When Autoslide is engaged, maneuvering the Arrow with the joystick or keyboard will make it pivot on its axis without changing its direction of flight, which has multiple tactical usages.

Spaceman

All your belief cannot absolve your sin.

Wonderful to see this released at last. Looking forward to trying this out. Great to see that classic elements such as the "Shelton Slide" have made it in. That must have been hell to add to the engine.

All your belief cannot absolve your sin.

I'm thusfar very impressed, haven't had a chance to fly around much, but the voice acting and cutscene actually reminded me of star trek episodes. None of the cuts were too long and the dialogue is for the most part both believable and in good quantities. Some of the briefing for the first training mission seemed a bit deadpan which would be fine... if what was being said wasn't a joke. Just something to look at next time. The installer was well implemented as well. Almost missed the fiction viewer. Might want to draw a little more attention to that, it's definately worth looking at.

Spaceman

NICE! I'm downloading now and will confirm waht I already know from following this on teh net for a wile now. THIS IS GONNA BE AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for the hard work and have a very HAPPY New Year.

EDIT: HOLY CRAP!You guys rock!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm gonna be up all night playing this game. Graphics are awesome, controls are very nice, interface is incredible, and you've captured the feel of the WC universe perfectly. Amazing considering it's FREE and even professionally paid game houses failed to do what you've done.

Thanks again - now I just have to figure out how to get out of the New Year Party so I can keep playing... Can't wait for the next installment!